STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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Watch The First Trailer For Star Trek Beyond

There’s a third Star Trek movie in production, and it looks kinda cool. Star Trek Beyond, directed by the guy behind a bunch of Fast and Furious movies, follows on from Star Trek Into Darkness, and it looks a lot more mainstream than the previous flicks.

This trailer is going to piss off a lot of faithful Trekkies, because it’s not exactly classic Trek, but who cares, right? This is going to be the Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift of the Star Trek franchise, and I’m completely fine with that. Kirk and Spock and Bones McCoy are back, there are explosions and space ships and a Beastie Boys soundtrack, and it’ll be released on the 50th anniversary of the original series.

From director Justin Lin comes STAR TREK BEYOND starring Idris Elba, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zach Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban. In theaters July 22nd.

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OLIO MODEL ONE CONNECTED WATCH

Developed by a team with history at Apple, Beats, Pixar, Movado, and NASA, the Olio Model One Connected Watch has quite the pedigree. And it shows. Inside the cold forged stainless steel case you'll find a high-res LCD display that shows you all your notifications, weather info, and appointments in a novel way, sorted by time — Earlier and Later. That way you can quickly catch up on what's been happening, and what's about to happen. It handles incoming calls with ease, thanks to Bluetooth, and can run for a full day without hooking in to its wireless charger. Available in steel, black PVD, 24-karat gold, or 18-karat rose gold, with each collection sporting a unique watchface designed to match the case.

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SPURCYCLE BELL

The added safety of a bell on your handlebars is more important than you realize. Made in the USA, each Spurcycle Bell is trimmed and hand brushed using brass and stainless steel. It also blends simply with your bike, making it almost invisible until you need it. Once needed, it's powerfully loud, with a convincing tone that rings three times longer than other bells, announcing your presence to motorists or pedestrians on your route.

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Watch The Truly Extreme Stunts And Tricks That This Helicopter Does

The opening sequence of the latest James Bond movie Spectre involves explosions, a chase scene, a well tailored suit and a fight scene inside a totally insane helicopter ride. This behind the scenes footage shows how batshit some of those tricks and maneuvers were. The helicopter purposely dives itself into a group of people on the ground, almost crashes into them, and then soars up at the very last second for added dramatic effect. I would have fainted if I was there.

Aerobatic helicopter pilot Chuck Aaron was the guy behind the stunts and he pulled off loops and barrel rolls and backflips and vertical climbs and vertical dives and a bunch more crazy stuff inside the helicopter. What’s interesting is that they had to film those tricks at a different city than the rest of the scene because the altitude of Mexico City was too high and the air was too thin.

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Photographs Capture What Life Is Like In One Of The World's Dirtiest Places

In the wake of the Paris Climate Agreement, it is pretty shocking to see these photographs taken in the Shanxi province in Northern China. Shanxi is the leading producer of coal in the most populated country in the world, with about 260 billion metric tonnes of coal deposits, a third of China’s total. The region produces more than 300 million metric tonnes of coal annually, and heavily depends on coal mining and burning coal for energy. That makes Shanxi is one of the most polluted areas in China.

Over the weekend 195 countries approved an agreement to set targets on reducing carbon emissions — the primary cause of global warming — in an attempt to forge a new global agreement on climate change. China is the source of nearly a third of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. China’s government has publicly set 2030 as a deadline to reach the country’s emissions peak, and data suggest its coal consumption is already in decline. But based on the scenes below captured by Getty Images photographer Kevin Frayer, this could be a daunting challenge.

A coal mine worker monitors a sorting area at a coal mine

Miners in a coal mine

Grave markers are seen in a cemetary as smoke billows from a coal fired power plant

Residents walk in a neighbourhood next to a coal fired power plant

The boot of a miner resting on a piece of coal

Workers monitor a sorting area at a coal mine

Workers stands next to a coal sorting machinery

Workers watches coal move on a belt

A mine worker warms herself over a stove as she takes a break

Workers sort coal for quality

Wearing mask is a must

A mine worker stands in front of his locker after finishing a shift

Coal is piled up as it is sorted at a coal mine

A woman collects coal in a sorting area at a mine

Man of coal

Residents wear masks for protection

Wang Nu,83, looks out the window of her house next to a coal fired power plant

Cityscape

A man carries coal he collected from a sorting area

MIKA: The next time you think you got it tough or the barrista makes a mistake with your morning latte, spare a thought about these folks..

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PARKOUR IN CHERNOBYL: THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE OR A JOURNEY INTO MADNESS?

A death toll of more than 50 due to the initial explosion, followed by 10 days of fire that forced the evacuation of 350,000 residents. Almost one million people – colloquially known as liquidators – have helped to minimise the consequences of the accident. Nearly half of them have died as a result, while the survivors' lives have been shortened.

When Chernobyl's nuclear accident occurred in April 1986, it was said that the zone would be uninhabitable for the next 40,000 years. Although some are still living very close, unwilling to leave their homes, staying in the surrounding area is said to be tantamount to signing one's own death warrant.

But perhaps not.

Hit the Road, a parkour collective formed by four young freerunners living in Paris, travelled last summer to the actual centre of the nuclear power plant. "We wanted to see with our own eyes how nature had colonised the urban spaces that we only knew from what we had read or seen in photos", Clément Dumais, a member of the group, told VICE Sports at a pub in Paris.

Dumais co-founded the freerunning collective in 2012 along with Nico Mathieux and Paul RBD. Two years later another freerunner, Leo Urban, joined them. With the group now complete, their number one objective was quickly decided: climbing the Eiffel Tower.

"Going to Chernobyl was totally worth it," says Leo "but we really didn't know what to expect and it left us speechless". Before steering towards the ghost town, the parkour collective visited Kiev to meet some of the traceurs – as those who practice parkour or freerunning are known – from the Ukrainian city.

During their time in the capital they searched abandoned bunkers. "That's where we found the suits and masks that we took to the prohibited zone," says Nico. He shows us one of the masks, which looks like a prop from a Hollywood movie. "They were all from the Cold War, in case there was a nuclear attack. We found them in closed boxes, totally new."

In Kiev they met with someone interested in urban exploring who had been to Chernobyl three or four times using GPS. "He knew the way and knew the police check points and, more importantly, how to avoid them," explains Paul. There are many military checkpoints around the nuclear power plant to prevent access to the prohibited zone. Those who break the law can go to prison without trial.

"We drove from Kiev to a place around 12 miles from the first checkpoint. Then we climbed through a hole in the mesh fence and started walking," says Leo. The first night they walked for 12 hours.

In the power plant, the work to isolate the perforated sarcophagus continues with high risks of radioactive exposure, hence the military patrols and the ban on civilians.

"To avoid some of the guards we had to cross through highly radioactive areas that seriously worried us," admits Clément. "Leo got a cut in his hand and when measuring the radioactivity with the Geiger counter we saw it was seriously high". Some of the vegetation they touched was 14 times more radioactive than the safe limit.

The limit of daily radioactivity is 0.30mSv. The group reached up to 5.20 mSv in the woods, but only during very brief exposures. They slept in places where radioactivity wouldn't exceed the limit, but they still had to be very careful. "We were amazed about what we were seeing and looking forward to coming back home," said Leo.

In order to arrive in Pripyat, the ghost town three miles from Chernobyl that was evacuated 36 hours after the accident, Hit the Road had to cross through rivers, woods and follow railway tracks. "We were exhausted from all the walking so we did very little parkour. We mainly explored the town and its surroundings," says Nico, looking at his trainers. "These are the same I was wearing. They are good to do parkour but not so good to walk. Not that many miles, anyway."

"The hardest part was accepting that we were completely exposed to the radiation and still carry on walking," explains Leo. The others nod. Parkour is their life: a discipline that goes far beyond inner mental and physical limits. And that is exactly what they did in one of the most radioactive zones on the planet.

Travelling from Paris to Chernobyl, they also time travelled from the 21st century to the reality of a Soviet Bloc nation during the 1980s. It is an untouched zone: everything looks like when it was left by the families that would never come back. There are communist symbols everywhere.

"We thought that after the work of the liquidators there wasn't much more left to do in Chernobyl. Nevertheless, we actually realised that without the Ukrainians studying and safeguarding the place the radioactivity would travel a lot further," said Paul.

"It feels like it was ages ago... but it has only been 30 years," says Clément before he leaves.

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THE DEAD RABBIT DRINKS MANUAL

For an unparalleled turn-of-the-century, look no further than Dead Rabbit Grocery & Grog in Lower Manhattan. And that same vibe shines through in the bar's first cocktail book: The Dead Rabbit Drinks Manual: Secret Recipes and Barroom Tales from Two Belfast Boys Who Conquered the Cocktail World. Each recipe is rooted in rich history from the "Gangs Of New York" era and ranges from toddies and fizzes to communal punches and absinthe-based cocktails. A unique glimpse into the brain of one of the best cocktail bars in the world.

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Sorry Treasure Hunters, That Fabled Nazi Gold Train Probably Doesn't Exist

Earlier this summer, amateur treasure hunters made quite a stir when they announced the discovery of along-lost Nazi gold train, buried under a pile of rocks in a Polish rail tunnel. It was a controversial claim to begin with, and now, scientists are saying it’s just a load of malarkey.

“There is no train,” Janusz Madej of the Polish mining academy said in a press conference on Tuesday, according to a report by The Guardian. “The geo-magnetic model anomalies would be far greater if there was a train.”

Since Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter notified the world of the mythical train in August, journalists and other treasure seekers have flocked to the Polish city of Wałbrych to search for the booty. Scientists got involved, too. After the site along the Wrocław-Wałbrzych railway line was identified and cleared, a team from the Polish mining academy conducted a month-long survey using magnetic field detectors, thermal imaging cameras, and radar.

Their investigation did reveal some anomalies in the ground, but the unidentified objects were no more than 2m beneath the surface. The train, meanwhile, was supposed to be buried 9m down. Polish scientists suggest that overhead power cables may have skewed Koper and Richter’s original measurements.

This is hardly a new brand of frenzied treasure-hunting. Nazi trains filled with gems, gold, weapons and stolen art have captured imaginations for decades. The legend is especially persistent in southern Poland, owing to the fact that Nazi Germany excavated a vast tunnel network in the Owl Mountains, for reasons that remain uncertain to this day. Locals say that amateur treasure-hunting was banned during the communist era, a fact which has only stoked the hopes of 21st-century gold seekers.

The Polish mining academy may feel that the case is closed, but Koper and Richter continue to insist that their evidence is sound. In fact, the treasure hunters reportedly handed “new research” to Wałbrych city authorities in a sealed envelope on December 7th. It isn’t clear whether these latest findings have been vetted by experts yet, but given this duo’s knack for drawing attention, it’s probably safe to assume that we haven’t heard the last word.

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A Bad Lip Reading of ‘Star Wars’

Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, and Jack Black hilariously try to voice over the first movie in the series.

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KUBERG FREERIDER ELECTRIC BIKE

The Kuberg Freerider Electric Bike takes a more aggressive design than the e-bikes that we’re used to, which aligns nicely with the fact that its also exceptionally powerful.

It aims to be nothing more than a fast and fun bike that’s perfect for thrill-seekers. It has a sleek design that’s highlighted by its Moto-X-like seat and flashes of yellow. It has a 22 AH battery pack that provides fast acceleration and up to an hour of riding at full speed, and is fully recharged in just 2.5 hours. The 48V motor pushes out 8kW of power to allow riders to hit a max speed of 34 mph. It also features advanced Kuberg electronics that bring massive power and a highly modular design, allowing riders to upgrade it with add-ons. In fact, it uses all state-of-the-art Kuberg components. Watch the video below. [Purchase]

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SENNHEISER HD800 S HEADPHONES

Sennheiser is already well known in the audiophile community for its high quality, studio-ready headsets. Now, the company has updated their most heralded headphones, the HD800, with the HD800 S, taking the sound fidelity up a notch.

The new model uses an upgraded 56mm transducer system — the largest transducer found in headphones to date — that provides highly detailed sound with no distortion (or rather, less than 0.02 percent). The headset has a massive frequency response range from 4 to 51,000 Hz. Each set is crafted by hand using high-end materials like stainless steel gauze, layers of sound-attenuating plastic and stainless steel, as well as aviation-grade plastic in the earcups. The new version of the headset also adds a symmetrical XLR4 cable, enhancing the equipment level. Pricing information is currently unavailable, but the HD 800, its predecessor, currently has an MSRP of $1,899. [Purchase]

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SKYDOME CABIN

Dome-shaped housing still isn’t common, as most of our homes have an angular, boxy feel to them. But Russian company Skydome has created an impressive series of homes that revolve around rounded structures, giving a new contemporary spin on the classic home.

There are currently six different models, each coming in a different size. The smallest starts at 34 square meters, and the largest hits 300 square meters.The Skydome supports over 1,500 pounds of snow per square meter, and it is able to stand up to other weather as well as traditional homes. The curved walls provides energy efficiency, since it has a low rate of heat loss. Along the sides, you’ll find large windows that curve upwards toward the top center of the home. The interior design possibilities are endless, as you’re not limited by side walls. Pricing information is currently unavailable. [Purchase]

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Crafted Meat: The New Meat Culture: Craft and Recipes

While it might not be applicable for the herbivores reading this, there are few things that get most of us more excited than a fine spread of meat decorating a cutting board or cooking tray straight from the grill or oven.

Henrik Haase, R. Klanten and Sven Ehmann agree, which is why they created Crafted Meat: The New Meat Culture: Craft and Recipes. The book is a 250+ page exploration into the young butchers at the front of the current meat movement who are firm believers in the less, but better mentality. It provides information on the entire process from pasture to plate, with helpful information, recipes, and expert tips for anyone who actually cares about sustainable eating.

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ANCHOR CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

For over 40 years, Anchor Christmas Ale has been a holiday fixture for beer lovers.Anchor Christmas Spirit extends that tradition and proves that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Anchor Distilling uses copper pot stills to double distill each batch in San Francisco using the remaining stock of 2014 Christmas Ale. It's then bottled at 90 proof and available for a limited time in California. Each bottle is a holiday celebration that encapsulates the spirit of Christmas past.

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A Brief Visual History of People Waiting in Line for Star Wars

Have you been waiting in line for days to see the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens? Of course you haven’t. You bought your tickets online like a normal person. But there once was a time when buying tickets online wasn’t even possible. Below we have pictures of those poor chumps from the Olden Times™ who had to buy tickets after waiting in line — sometimes for weeks.

Star Wars: A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi

The Phantom Menace

Attack of the Clones

Revenge of the Sith

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Vin Diesel Has a New TV Deal and It'll Usher in the Return of Riddick

Is there anything Vin Diesel can’t will into existence? His 2009 return to the Fast and Furious fold helped turn that franchise into a monster. He’s got a xXx sequel on the way, and has already made two sequels to Pitch Black. Now, that latter world will expand into TV.

Diesel just signed a new deal with Universal TV. One of his first moves will be developing a TV show described as a “complement” to his Riddick films. Those consist of Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick, which follow a unusually brutal and talented killer alien fugitive who can see in the dark.

There’s no word if Diesel will reprise his character on the show. But odds are this will be Merc City, a show he talked about last month. It’ll follow “the Mercs and Bounty Hunters of the Riddick Universe.” In that same Instagram post, he also said that director David Twohy was writing a fourth Riddick movie, to be titled Furia.

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The Trinity Rises Up On a New Set of Gritty Batman v Superman Posters

When a big movie is released in theaters, all the other studios take advantage of the attendance bump with new trailers, posters and more. One of 2016’s biggest films, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, already has the trailer and now there are posters too.

The official Batman v Superman Twitter account posted these simple, but striking character posters for the film, which opens March 25, 2016. Check them out.

DC guru Geoff Johns also posted a new poster, that looks official, but when you look at the full version (via The Fire Wire) is actually fan-made. Nevertheless, it’s also pretty nice and while you’re here anyway...

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Microsoft's Latest HoloLens Is Here, And It's Amazing

The HoloLens headset from Microsoft is the world’s first untethered wearable that generates holograms before your eyes. It’s been nearly a year since we first strapped a prototype to our faces, and as the tech goliath prepares to unleash a first batch of units to developers in the coming months, I was invited to check out just how far the technology has come. Holograms are here people — and they’re going to change your life.

As a kid who grew up with a hand-me-down rabbit-ear TV and a rotary phone, I sometimes wonder if modern-day reality is actually a Jetsons-like, cyberpunk, Truman Show scifi whose clandestine cameras I’m completely oblivious to. Well, I had one of those moments earlier this week when I tried out HoloLens for the very first time, and the work Microsoft put in is evident. Sure the experience is still occasionally glitchy, but make no mistake, it’s very cool. Between improvements seemingly made since our last hands-on, and after playing Microsoft’s recently debuted augmented reality video game, I’m convinced: We’re entering the age of the hologram.

Plus? Starting today, Microsoft’s letting developers flock to their flagship store in New York City to try out the same demos I did a few days ago. I’ll go through ’em one by one. But first, let’s talk about the HoloLens’ progress.

Here at Gizmodo, we’ve had hands-on with the headset before. And there are still a few pitfalls that still exist: The field-of-vision is still narrow, meaning you can only see holograms directly in front of you. The headset still feels a bit top-heavy. And the adjustment wheel on the strap that goes around the back of your head snags your hair while you rotate it to tighten the thing onto your head. Not pleasant.

But, there are many improvements! I didn’t see any of the distracting rainbow-like effects at the corner of the goggles, as we did in a previous hands-on opportunity. I also didn’t notice any reflective objects in the room bouncing back light that distracted from the illusion — instead, actual objects looked actual objects, and the holograms looked like holograms. And, while I didn’t participate in previous Gizmodo firsthand tests, I didn’t think that you had to move your head too much in order to move the “cursor” that floats in front of your eyes to select menu items, as we previously reported. All those items were compact, and required minimal noggin tilting, in my opinion.

One huge update? We got to play Project X — now called Project X-Ray — for the very first time. That’s the dope-as-hell AR video game that was demoed on stage back in October. Slip HoloLens on, and malicious alien robots tunnel through your breakfast nook’s walls and unload lasers of doom at you. It’s your job to gun ’em down. It’s Halo meets laser tag.

In the game, enemy alien robots explode through the real walls in the room in AR, leaving you to physically scramble around the room to track them down, physically manoeuvring to avoid their beams. There were a couple moments when I felt like the image signal flowing before my eyes was kind of weak; like, the AR images were kind of faint and flickery. Overall though, it was intuitive to use with the handheld controller that was provided. The actual gameplay was precise and responsive, as well. Foes disappeared as soon as they were hit, with the same instant feedback you’d find in a traditional video game.

You might be wondering, how’s this any better than virtual reality? It’s a good question! To me, virtual and augmented realities are apples-and-oranges. While VR is like being cocooned in an 360-degree IMAX planetarium, AR blurs the line between the actual and the virtual worlds more than VR does. It’s just a different kind of fun to see bloodthirsty extraterrestrials orbiting your buddy’s head in real life, or ploughing through your family portrait from ’91 hanging on your parents’ foyer wall and then opening fire.

I’ve truly never played a video game like Project X-Ray before, and so long as Microsoft can make the experience glitch-and-gimmick free, the creative opportunities for developers are limitless. Imagine swinging an AR golf club in your backyard and seeing a holographic golf ball rocket into your annoying neighbour’s window, or setting off holographic fireworks into a night sky.

I will say that, out of all three of the HoloLens demos I was treated to, Project X-Ray was by far the glitchiest. Granted, the action was all extremely frantic: Enemies buzzed around me constantly and quickly, which required actual dodging and hopping and pivoting to parry their unending sortie. During all that, it was sometimes hard to keep track of them all, because the holograms of my robotic flying foes got weak, started flickering, or were hard to follow in that dinky field of vision.

But Project X-Ray was also the newest of the three demos! It was just revealed back in October, so it’s understandable it’s less polished. Let’s talk about the other two demos — which were, largely, bug-free, and looked freaking fantastic.

Reminder: With HoloLens, the “cursor” is your eyes. You look around the real room you’re in and select holographic images that appear in your goggles by hovering the cursor in the middle of your field of vision over the object. To interact with the object, you “air tap.” In front of the goggles, point your index in the air and then make a fast swipe down motion. Voice commands are also at your disposal.

So, onto the second demo: Holographic storytelling. The idea here is that you can replace godawful PowerPoints with holograms. In this case, I stepped into a fictional boardroom pitch for a luxury watch. I looked at real table in the demo room and saw a large hologram watch blown up to the size of a golden retriever. It was a little glitchy — I think it was supposed to be directly on the table like a real watch would sit, but instead the image was really off-center and appeared along the edge of the table.

From there, I could move the cursor with my eyes to different points of interest on the watch: “Here’s what the links are made of,” for example, or info about the battery. The really cool thing about this, from a business presentation standpoint, is that you can actually see where your audience is looking at the hologram — assuming they’re also wearing a HoloLens set, that is. You can transform your hologram so that it looks like a heat map: The redder parts of the “object” are where more people look. In my case, the big watch face was a focal point for my hypothetical audience, so I was able to use that data and go in and add an interest point that provided a factoid about the face’s composition.

And, for the final demo: HoloStudio. Here, you can download a 3D project you’ve already worked on on a computer, for example, and then create a hologram out of it — and then tweak it in augmented reality. When you’re done, you can send it back to your computer, a 3D printer, and more.

The first thing you have to do, before you turn the real room into an AR workshop for 3D holograms, is “scan” the space. This tells the software where you can place your finished creations in the real room. For example, you’ll be able to stick your homemade AR sign on a wall next to a real-life painting, or on an odder shape, like the top of an end table or the side of a sofa.

My demo consisted of a cartoony, underwater dive scene inspired by Hawaii. There were small blue fish, a couple of human divers, sand, lots of coral, plants, anemones, that kinda thing. At first, it was a tiny, diorama hologram — but I could blow it up so that it filled the room, and I was among the underwater scene. I could then use my eye-cursor to select one of the fish, copy and paste him around the vignette, and even blow one of them up to pony-sized proportions. In another scene, I was able to spray paint a Star Wars X-Wing orange. These projects can be saved and sent to you later.

All in all, I can honestly say that this was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. There’s still plenty to be sceptical of: That peskily narrow field of vision needs to be made way bigger to achieve the same level of immersion as VR — that still hasn’t changed, and needs to be addressed. And the quality of the holograms themselves, as well as the accuracy of their placements in the rooms, were at times unreliable and inconsistent, so that needs work. Plus, HoloLens will only be available to developers and commercial buyers in North America for $US3,000 ($4,162) a pop in quarter one of 2016, so it will be a while before it’s even available to Joe Schmoe consumers like you and me.

Until then, know that holograms are here, and that some of the biggest tech companies on planet Earth are working to get them in our hands — even the ones that are staticky and flickering. As my colleague Brent Rose said: “I’m so glad I lived long enough to make it to the future.” Me too, dude.

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That Squishy Key Piano Is Now Available As A Free 3D Touch IPhone App

At $US800 ($1,125) for the small version, Seaboard’s Roli keyboards — with their touch sensitive squishy keys that let musicians enhance their performances while they play — aren’t cheap. But taking advantage of the iPhone 6s’ 3D Touch feature, there’s now a free Roli app that provides a similar experience on your phone.

NOISE 5D works on older iOS devices as well, but performances will be limited to tap and swipe gestures on its virtual keyboard. To take advantage of the pressure-sensitive features that the Roli’s keyboards are known for — like shifting pitch by pressing harder, or creating vibrato with just a finger wiggle — you’ll need to be using the app on a newer iPhone with 3D Touch.

Despite being free, Roli hasn’t skimped on the features in its app. You have the option to display 13, 17, or 25 keys on screen at a time, you can tweak the layout with additional modulation controls, and it supports MIDI over Bluetooth so you can use it for actual performances.

In the event that the 25 simulated instruments included don’t provide the exact sound you’re looking for, there are also add-on sound packs available for just a few dollars. If you bought an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus and have been disappointed with the lazy implementation of 3D Touch features to date, you finally have a reason to feel good about upgrading your phone.

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It Seems So Obvious Now: Salt-Infused Asphalt Could Keep Roads Ice-Free

When winter finally starts dumping snow and ice on roads, cities fight back by spreading tons of salt to melt the slippery hazard. But what if roads already had salt built right into them? They’d be able to prevent slick conditions from occurring, well before the risk of an accident.

A team of researchers from Koc University in Turkey mixed salt potassium formate — which has already been studied as a potential eco-friendly deicer — with a water-repelling polymer called styrene-butadiene-styrene. That mixture was then added to bitumen — a key ingredient in asphalt — resulting in a material that was still strong and durable, but had the added ability of preventing ice from forming.

In lab tests, the new asphalt mix released ice melting salts for almost two solid months, but in real world applications that could easily be stretched to years because the vehicles driving on the material would slowly wear it away, revealing salt-dense layers beneath. It sounds like a car would be subject to the rigors of salt and corrosion all year round as a result, but that’s arguably better than sliding into another vehicle on a cold snowy morning before the plows have worked their magic.

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Old-School Video Game Maker Coleco Is Making A New Cartridge-Based Console

If you were a gamer in the early ’80s like me, you’ve no doubt played ColecoVision — the short-lived console that brought arcade games to your living room. Well, get ready for a nostalgia hurricane, because Coleco is back on the scene with a new home console — and it will play actual game cartridges.

The hero of this comeback story is called Coleco Chameleon. This 21st-century console will play 20th-century 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit titles. There will also be brand new games with similar graphics available, too, so Coleco is smartly cashing in on the popularity of retro-style 2D titles that have been hits on all platforms from smartphones to Steam.

“It’s ironic that a new ‘retro’ video-game system would actually revolutionise and revitalize the Coleco brand,” said Coleco partner Chris Cardillo, in a press release. The project’s a collaboration between Coleco and a company called Retro Video Game Systems.

No price comes with this announcement, but it will hit shelves next year, and it will be shown at Toy Fair New York 2016 in February.

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Here's How Miles Morales Comes To The New Marvel Universe

There are lots of Spider-people in the Marvel Universe right now. But only two of them call themselves Spider-Man. One, of course, is the newly-rich Peter Parker, originator of the wall-crawler identity. The other is an alternate-reality successor to the Spider-mantle named Miles Morales. This week, we see Miles play a pivotal role in the last superhero battle of the Ultimate Universe.

Peter Parker died in Miles Morales‘ native reality, victim of injuries suffered at the hands of archenemy Norman Osborn/Green Goblin. But months before Parker’s death, Miles had gotten bitten by another genetically engineered spider like the one that gave his predecessor his powers. His adventures have been happening for years now and the character’s debut has proven to be the most lasting artifact of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe imprint. The Ultimate Universe, which debuted in 2000, was populated with modernised interpretations of the publisher’s superheroes, some of whom had slightly different origins and appearances.

Spoilers follow - CLICK TO ENLARGE PICTURES

But, despite high-stakes storylines that made the alternate reality radically divergent from the mainline one, enthusiasm for the line flagged. The powers-that-be decided to shutter the Ultimate-verse via a big crossover event called Secret Wars. That series has thrown together characters from a slew of dying realities on a composite planet created by an omnipotent Doctor Doom. In the Ultimate End miniseries — by Brian Bendis, Mark Bagley and others — heroes from mainline reality Earth-616 and the Ultimate Universe’s Earth-1610 find themselves shoved up against their counterparts.

The different versions of Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and others are superheroes dealing with an unknown set of circumstances so, of course, they fight each other. But Miles — who survived the end of everything and Doom’s ascendance to godhood in an extra-dimensional life raft — explains that they’re from different realities.

After that revelation, the assembled heroes act according to their nature and go and fight the bad guy.

The amount of fear and doubt in Ultimate End #5 makes the last moments of the Ultimate Universe unexpectedly poignant.

We don’t see the final showdown with Doom and how the Marvel Universe gets revised into its current new form. But we do see that Miles survives and that the great tragedy of his young life — the death of his mother during his first set of superhero battles — has been undone.

Right now, it’s an open question as to how Marvel’s going to treat Miles’ backstory and whether this Spider-Man will remember what happened in the alternate reality where he was born. Will he or Peter Parker remember his old life? Will he have a different origin story? These questions will get answered in the February-debuting Spider-Man series that serves as Miles’ solo book. But, he’s already been shown as a member of the newest core Avengers squad. Most of Marvel’s other Ultimate characters will be fading from view but Miles Morales likely has an important future ahead of him.

[MIKA27]

China Tries to Blast Smog Out of the Sky with Water Cannons

A “red alert” in Beijing means the pollution is so bad, one deep breath turns your face red before you pass out and lose your alertness – or worse. Now those red alerts may be followed by a “wet alert” warning residents they’re about to get soaked by water cannons attempting to blast the smog out of the sky. Will it work?

The technology comes from a place even more polluted than China – coal mines. Hunan Jiujiu Mining Safety Equipment developed the “Multi-Function Dust Suppressor” as a way to protect miners from the severe respiratory problems caused by working in coal and other dusty mines. The cannons work on the same principle as nebulizers, which are mist inhalers used to deliver drugs to patients suffering from cystic fibrosis, asthma and other lung diseases.

Rather than delivering drugs to save lungs, the mist cannons remove particles from the air before they can be inhaled. The tiny water droplets (10 microns in diameter) are blasted into the air where they attach themselves to the dust and dirt particles in the smog, making them heavy enough to fall to the ground – where they probably cause different problems and increased business for car washes.

There’s a lot of smog in China. Can these cannons handle it? According to the company, one Multi-Function Dust Suppressor can hold ten tons of water and spray a nebulized mist for 75 minutes. The spray will cover an area 100 meters (330 feet) wide and 60 meters (200 feet) high. The cannons can be mounted on the backs of trucks and driven around for even wider coverage.

The idea sounds so good, a number of cities (like Guigang, Changsha and Zhuzhou) have purchased the cannons at the low-low price of $12,400 for a stationary model or $92,700 for the truck-mounted. There’s talk of putting them on the roofs of buildings or even have helicopters fly over areas with their cannons blasting. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the cities, already suffering from droughts that created some of the dust, could run out of water. The dirty water droplets can end up polluting streams and there aren’t any cannons that can fix that. There’s the concern that pumping so much water in the air will alter the weather. And there’s the indisputable fact that there’s a LOT of pollution in China.

It’s ironic that “Multi-Function Dust Suppressor” came from coal mines – the source of the leading contributor to air pollution in the first place. Is there a message here?

[MIKA27]

‘Star Wars’ Has Biggest Opening Ever

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" had the biggest opening box office weekend of all time grossing $238 million in North America alone. The previous record-holder for the biggest domestic opening in the United States was 2015's "Jurassic World" which made an enormous $208.8 million. Worldwide, "The Force Awakens" raked in $517 million, which is the second biggest global opening behind "Jurassic World."

[MIKA27]

Does Darth Vader Actor David Prowse Still Hate ‘Star Wars’?

When most people think of Darth Vader, one of the first things that comes to mind is the iconic, booming voice of James Earl Jones. But across the pond, the Star Wars supervillain may be equally associated with David Prowse, the now 80-year-old British actor who played him onscreen.

And while Star Wars fans across the world are celebrating the release of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Prowse, whose voice was replaced with Jones’s in the original trilogy, has taken to British tabloids to vent about what he views as a disrespectful snub from George Lucas and the rest of the LucasFilm team.

Prowse, who was cast in the film based on little more than his 6’ 6” height, gave an exclusive interview last week to The Sun, saying, “I’ve only got one favourite memory of filming Star Wars and that is when my very first cheque arrived.”

“No one bothered to contact me about the new movie and to be honest I don’t care,” he added. “I don’t even own Darth Vader’s mask anymore.” Prowse also said that he prefers to be known as the Green Cross Code Man, a superhero character he played in various British road safety PSAs over the years.

“Those behind the film cut me out and have continued to ignore me for years,” Prowse said in the new interview. “So do I have any interest in watching the new movie? No, I don’t.”

Prowse, who is said to be suffering from memory loss and other physical ailments, claims not to know the origin of his feud with Lucas. But it almost certainly dates back to a speech he gave at UC Berkeley in 1978 in which he inadvertently spoiled the ending to The Empire Strikes Back, two years before it was released in theaters.

“Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker… are hooked up in a do-or-die lightsaber duel when Luke learned that Darth is, in fact, his long-lost father,’” Prowse told the audience.

“Father can’t kill son, son can’t kill father. So they live again to star in ‘Star Wars IV.’”

Yet, because Lucas safeguarded against spoilers by having Prowse utter the words “Obi-Wan killed your father” instead of the now legendary line “I am your father” in the scene, it’s possible that Prowse did not even mean to spoil the ending. He may have simply been speculating about another possible outcome — and trying to find a way for his character to survive into the next trilogy.

Fans first got a chance to hear what Darth Vader would have sounded like had the filmmakers kept Prowse’s voice in the 2004 documentary Empire of Dreams.

But it was a subsequent documentary, 2010’s The People vs. George Lucas, that increased tensions between the two men. Prowse claims that he did not realize when he gave his interview to the filmmakers behind that project that he would be appearing in an anti-George Lucas movie. Shortly after, Prowse said he was banned from attending any official Star Wars fan conventions.

In the Sun interview, Prowse mostly just sounds like he feels left out of the revived Star Wars mania. “I have never had a call from anyone to be in the new movie,” he told The Sun. “Nobody even bothered to get in contact to ask me about my association with this movie.”

“There was no way I could come back as Darth Vader, as he was killed off, but it would have been nice to have been offered a part, irrespective of the role,” he continued. “It would have been really nice to continue with the Star Wars association.”

“When the new film was being made they had a big party to launch it and I never got invited,” he added.

But while Prowse reportedly said that he had no interest in seeing the new film, there he was yesterday at the Odeon cinema in Cardiff, Wales, arriving for an early screening of The Force Awakens in a white limousine, with Stormtroopers on hand to escort him into the theater.

He even promoted the appearance on his Twitter account, @isDARTHVADER, with a series of tweets leading up to the big day:

Where are you seeing #TheForceAwakens? I'm opening the Premier at Odeon Cinema Cardiff Thursday with @JayceLewisUK

If you have a stormtrooper costume come and escort me into the Odeon Cardiff tonight at 7pm

On my way to see The Force Awakens with @JayceLewisUK The force is strong with us! #StarWarsTheForceAwakens

“I am looking forward to going to this Odeon premiere, we have spoken so much about where the story leads,” Prowse reportedly said as he signed autographs for a handful of fans who showed up to see him, adding, “I think they killed Vader off far too early.”

Prowse also released a statement calling the idea that he would not be seeing the film “total rubbish.” He added, “I wish nothing but the best for The Force Awakens and hope you enjoy seeing it too.”

His only negative comment about the film series came when someone asked what he was most looking forward to in the latest installment. “I’m hoping there are none of those damn Ewoks in this one,” he said.